Chapter Bonanza (10/10)

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

“So this is what gastrodia looks like.”

Yan Qi rubbed the dirt off the gastrodia in his hands. There were four in this handful; he cupped them and placed them in the basket beside him. “Is there more in the ground?”

“Yes, gastrodia grows in clusters, just like potatoes.”

Huo Ling dug a little deeper and unearthed a dozen or so in quick succession, handing them all to Yan Qi.

After clearing that patch, the two went elsewhere to search.

Gradually, Yan Qi grew eager to try his hand at it. While Huo Ling was digging, he too used a twig to probe the surrounding area. Spotting a patch that looked somewhat like where gastrodia might grow, he called out to Huo Ling to come take a look.

“Do you think there’s any down here?”

Huo Ling brushed the dirt off his hands, took the twig, and turned over the loose topsoil. “There might be. Let’s dig and see.”

Realizing he hadn’t been wrong—or at least that there was a possibility—Yan Qi crouched down and began digging alongside Huo Ling.

The soil here was somewhat hard. They used a shovel to loosen it and probed toward the center. They found no gastrodia in the shallow layer. Just as Yan Qi was about to lose heart, Huo Ling kept digging deeper.

After digging another four or five inches, he pulled up a whole cluster of “clumps of earth.”

Yan Qi smiled. “There really is some.”

Huo Ling was equally delighted; they dug up another two catties from this spot, making for a bountiful harvest.

While searching for gastrodia, if they came across fallen trees, they would circle around to take a look; if they found Lingzhi, they would pick it as well, wrapping it in leaves and setting it aside.

Like wild vegetables, these two mountain treasures are time-sensitive and won’t wait for anyone—unlike birch polypore, which is available year-round, or pine mushrooms, lion’s mane mushrooms, and kidney grass, which survive the winter without withering.

Reishi mushrooms begin to release a powdery substance about a month after sprouting; once that happens, their medicinal properties weaken, and they lose their value. As for gastrodia, as Huo Ling had said, it must be harvested before it breaks through the soil.

A basketful of gastrodia—it looked a bit like old ginger, yet also resembled taro.

It’s too cold in the Northeast to grow taro, so Huo Ling had never tasted it in his life. Yan Qi picked up a piece of gastrodia and asked Huo Ling what it tasted like.

“Can you eat it raw?”

“You can eat it, but it doesn’t taste good. Most people dry it and then steep it in water.”

Huo Ling picked out a smaller piece, rinsed it under water, peeled off the outer skin, and handed it to Yan Qi. “Take a small bite—but don’t eat too much.”

It was the young ger’s first year in the mountains, and he wasn’t yet familiar with all the wild produce. He always had so many questions. Gone was the shyness he’d felt when he first arrived; he was more like a child now, picking every wild fruit he saw to taste it.

Earlier today, he’d eaten an unripe wild cherry so sour it made him swallow hard, reminding Huo Ling of his little niece, Huo Ying.

Yan Qi didn’t know what Huo Ling was thinking. He leaned in, took a tiny bite, and frowned. “It’s spicy.”

Now it tasted even more like ginger.

“Raw gastrodia is a bit spicy. The gastrodia sold in pharmacies is steamed and sun-dried, but we don’t go to that trouble—we only sell it sun-dried. Still, every year we set aside some to steam and dry; it makes a nice gift during festivals.”

This piece of gastrodia was just for Yan Qi to sample; it wouldn’t be a shame to throw the rest away.

Huo Ling tossed it far away and rested there with Yan Qi, eating a simple snack of dried rations.

Dager and Huang Yuer were playing nearby, stomping on the ground and sending fallen leaves flying in a rustling shower.

Yan Qi chewed on a cold pastry, leaning back against the tree and looking up. He saw that the tree trunk higher up was pitted and hollowed out, with many pine nut shells embedded in it. He quickly swallowed the pastry and reached up to touch it. “How did these pine nuts end up in the bark?”

Huo Ling glanced at them and said, “The birds put them there.”

“Birds?”

Yan Qi instinctively looked up at the sky.

Huo Ling tapped a few pine cones loose with his dagger to show Yan Qi. It was clear that a long time had passed; they were all empty inside.

“Some birds eat pine nuts. They wedge them into cracks in the bark, use a clever twist to crack them open, and then fly away after eating the kernels inside.”

“When it comes to eating, no one’s stupid.”

Yan Qi found this fascinating and tried picking at the bark himself.

“Are this year’s new pine nuts about to fall soon?”

Huo Ling took another pastry, chewed it a couple of times with some cold water, and said, “Soon. After the autumn harvest, we’ll head into the mountains to gather pine nuts. I’ve already talked it over with my older brother—he’ll be coming too.”

It wasn’t just the mountain herders who gathered pine nuts; there were also people who took advantage of the time after the autumn harvest to head into the mountains and make a little money.

“Gathering pine nuts, digging for ginger and gastrodia, catching crayfish in the river, and foraging for mushrooms under the trees.”

Of all the seasons in the mountains, autumn is by far the liveliest. However, most people cannot venture into the deep mountains where Huo Ling frequently travels; they merely wander around the lower slopes.

Gathering pine nuts isn’t exactly easy work—it involves climbing tall trees. Most who can do this are from families where the older generation used to be mountain porters; they’ve been practicing since childhood and have developed some skills along the way.

“In previous years, my brother and sister-in-law would go into the mountains with me, leaving Yingzi at the village chief’s house for two nights. This year, my older sister-in-law will definitely be staying home.”

Huo Ling took a couple of bites of his stuffed bun. “By that time, there might still be some unpowdered lingzhi or unharvested gastrodia to snag. My older brother’s really eager this year—he’s hoping to earn extra money to support the kids.”

It was indeed a lucrative opportunity, and Yan Qi knew from Huo Ling that in past years, people had even offered to pay him to serve as their “foreman,” leading them into the mountains to search for ginseng.

Huo Ling had turned down every such offer.

“Those two men aren’t from our village. I don’t know where they heard about me, but they even know the ‘go odd, return even’ rule.”

“Go odd, return even” is a custom when digging for ginseng: you must enter the mountains in an odd number of people—like three or five—and if you find wild ginseng on the way back, that extra person becomes the “even” one, making the total an even number.

“They said they’d make up a group of three with me, offering me one tael of silver each. We’d spend three days and two nights in the mountains, and they wouldn’t need me to provide meals.”

It sounded like a good deal—just guiding a group through the mountains for two taels of silver—but Huo Ling replied: “But just by looking at their build, these three aren’t country folk—they’re city people. They’ve never even tilled the soil properly. They really think Bailong Mountain is open to just anyone. Even if I’m leading them, if something goes wrong, won’t their families come looking for me?”

Yan Qi listened and asked, “And then? Did they just leave after you refused?”

Huo Ling replied, “They pestered me for a while. It got so annoying that I just grabbed my things and headed into the mountains. By the time I came back down, nearly half a month had passed. I heard from my older brother that those men didn’t believe they couldn’t hire a ‘guide’ with money, so they went to other villages to try their luck.”

He finished his pastry, washed his hands with water, then plucked two nearby leaves and rubbed them together.

“The more desperate people are to go into the mountains, the harder it is for them to find ginseng. The old foremen always say that ginseng is a magical thing—if it doesn’t want to be found, it’s as if your eyes are covered; even if the ginseng’s leaves are right under your nose, you won’t see them.”

To Yan Qi, what Huo Ling was saying was like listening to a story—he could never get enough of it.

Whenever Huo Ling saw his husband’s eyes shining brightly as he looked at him, he would rack his brains to find more amusing tales to tell him.

Fortunately, he had spent many years in the mountains; from childhood onward, he had plenty to share.

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

After spending three days in the mountains digging for gastrodia, they had gathered about thirty-odd pounds. That day, Huo Ling stayed home and went with Yan Qi to the stream to wash the gastrodia.

With water right at the doorstep, washing things was a breeze.

They filled a large basin with stream water, dumped all the gastrodia into it, stirred it a few times with a wooden stick, and scrubbed each one clean with a soft brush. The mud that washed off sank to the bottom, and the gastrodia, which had looked like clumps of dirt, gradually turned white and clean.

Back in the courtyard, they dumped the gastrodia directly onto a spread-out straw mat. It hadn’t rained in days, and the sun beat down relentlessly. Staying out in the midday sun for too long made it feel quite hot, though retreating into the shade of the trees brought a welcome coolness.

After spending too much time in the cool shade, one gradually becomes less tolerant of the heat; even a little sweat makes one feel a dry, uncomfortable heat all over.

The two of them boiled a large pot of mung bean soup to cool down. For lunch, they had rice cooked in water, served with pickles brought down from the mountains. Huo Ling also made a bowl of steamed eggs with soybean paste.

The steamed egg dish was essentially just steamed eggs; besides the soybean paste, it was sprinkled with chopped scallions and salt. Since Huo Ling liked a bit of spice, he also chopped up a green chili pepper picked from the family vegetable garden and added it to the mixture.

After it was done, he picked up a forkful to eat with the rice, which suddenly tasted much better. A meal like this in the summer was cool and refreshing, and best of all, it was simple to make—no need to sweat it out in the stuffy kitchen.

“We don’t have much pickled vegetables left. I was thinking of making some myself. What would you like?”

Yan Qi held his bowl and sipped some rice water. People with sensitive stomachs often get stomachaches from eating rice porridge, so Huo Ling had specifically told him to chew slowly and thoroughly, which is why he was eating so slowly.

Huo Ling took a bite of the salted radish strips. The pickled radish and dried green beans they’d been eating at home were all made by his older sister-in-law, while some of the other pickles—like the salted bellflower root—had been given to Yan Qi by Xiao Mingming.

These side dishes weren’t meant to be eaten as a main meal; he’d take a small bowl every day or two, and though he didn’t eat them quickly, they’d eventually run out.

“Why not make some with cucumbers or green chili peppers? There’s also something else that’s delicious—we call it ‘mountain radish’ here, or ‘wild codonopsis.’ You wouldn’t find it unless you looked for it specifically. I’ll go dig some up in the mountains; it makes for a pretty good pickle, too.”

Yan Qi smiled. “Great, I’ll try them all.”

The methods for making pickles beyond the Great Wall differed somewhat from those back home; some were oil-pickled, some used chili peppers, and some used soybean paste.

But he wasn’t picky; he found every variety quite tasty, so while they were living at the foot of the mountain, he learned the techniques from Ye Suping.

Usually, once winter sets in, people mostly use dried radish strips, dried eggplant strips, and dried green beans. But now was still the season for fresh vegetables; there was plenty to eat, so there was no need to stick to dried ones.

Speaking of fresh vegetables, he said to Huo Ling, “Since you’re not going into the mountains today, let’s go pick some vegetables from the garden in a bit.”

Since they didn’t farm, picking vegetables was their version of the autumn harvest. The long beans were nearly drooping to the ground, the purple-skinned eggplants were glossy, and the potatoes were ready to be dug up.

The leafy greens grew the fastest; they’d already been harvested several times. New shoots of chives had sprouted, and though the spinach leaves had a few insect bites, they were still perfectly edible.

There were also plenty of other vegetables: winter melons and pumpkins for cooking, as well as the bottle gourds Huo Ling had been eyeing for a long time. He’d been checking the field every other day, picking any that were ripe. He didn’t even need a knife—he’d simply tear them in half with his bare hands and share them with Yan Qi to munch on; they were juicy and sweet.

There are still a dozen or so left in the field now, and they’ve agreed to plant more next year.

Huo Ling agreed. He finished a large bowl of rice and soup in just a few bites, and Yan Qi couldn’t help but say, “If you want me to chew slowly, you should eat more slowly too—be careful not to upset your stomach.”

“I’m used to eating this way.”

Huo Ling set down his empty bowl and actually listened.

“I’ll definitely remember next time.”